SOMETIMES

Looking backward in my lifetime, I have always been only vaguely informed about Vaccines and even the terrible diseases that once ravaged the population…such as Polio…75-odd years ago, but fortunately have been almost eliminated throughout the world. But now…it appears to me…those killer/maimers are peeking out of the holes they once disappeared into.

The last day or so we are finding that Omicron, the latest strain of the Corona-virus to threaten mankind….which may be more hideous because it attacks our children. Oh No! How will the Anti-Vaxxers spin that development.?

They are saying the new strain causes new threat to children in the form of what the first reports described as the “croup.” Then the parenthetical word— “pertussis” sounding the nature of the new wave of horror… begging the question: What is “pertussis”? … whooping cough. A terrible affliction that fortunately was more or less wiped out before I was born in 1934. They called it the “croup,” and whenever one of us kids had even a hint of a cough, Mom would start to worry.

A quick Search of Google tells me that the DPT combination vaccine (against diptheria, pertussin, and tetanus) was developed in the 1930s by a pediatrician names Leila Denmark. I’m not sure when I was given the DPT vaccine. I do recall the Smallpox vaccine when I was about six years old, possibly given me after I had started school. I still have the scar from the bifurcated needle, a single needle which contained multiple small needles.

My first memories of the DPT vaccine was when my oldest child was a baby, in 1957. I believe when the next baby arrived in 1961, that the recently-new Polio vaccine had been added in or with the DPT. Incidentally, I note that when the oldest was six, she became very ill with the hard Measles. The boys were very young, and there was as yet no vaccine against Measles.

My personal vaccine history included a battery of shots before I went to Germany in 1955. Those included vaccination against Malaria, and boosters for anything I had had previously. I also had the series of Polio vaccinations, the Sabin, Salk, and the one given on a sugar-cube.

These images are of different photo-times. The top shots are recent a month ago; the bottom right shows a branch of berries starting to ripen. upper last shot is of what we call the “stud holly.” A few years ago our hollies won’t doing much in the way of making berries, so we adopted an appropriate plant…which has proven very successful. The last photo was taken of the big holly before the berry-making began. Some of the upper branches were broken in the severe storm we had in September when the over-hanging Japanese Plum tree branches broke and fell on the holly below. (I think the lower shot shows the plant in its blossom stage. (all photos ©Sometimes2021)

Here I am in one of my happiest hats. Frosty can do all sorts of tricks that Gradmama2011 would never do! Frosty lives on forever! (in my Sometimes blog, anyhow.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ALL OTHER HOLIDAYS AND SPECIAL OCCASIONS TO EVERYONE!

The first thing this morning (ok, so it was eleven o’clock,) there was a threatening message in my yahoo queue from one of my credit card companies, informing me that my payment had been declined.

What? Oh HECK NO! It was just Monday that we straightened that issue out when I agreed to make a payment and then, out of the goodness of my heart, I noted that the bank account information they had on file was outdated. My bank had changed information—again—this time including all of my account numbers in addition to the name of the bank; the accounts remained the same except they had completely different routing and account numbers.

I duly began a search to find the culprit in this case, and discovered—after being bounced off the company site three times, being cut off once by a reboot of my mainframe which involved a long wait for the internet signal to reset and watching the infernal little whirling circle for what seemed like ages before the Microsoft Sign-In thing appeared on the Desktop, and dealing with the flashing red bar warning me that my account was in count-down to oblivion—eventually—that the agent that noted my bank information on Monday had entered my phone number instead of the new bank number.

Now, IF I can reach the account settings page, I will go in there and enter the correct information. But those automatic forms do not offer a provision for customers to graciously accept that the agent had made an error, and gee whiz, errors happen… NO, there is no one to yell at and be appropriately remorseful.

I admit that I am no stranger to getting threats from bill collecting credit cards, and have reached the conclusion that if they are nice to me…I will be nice to them. Sometimes they are in error, sometimes I am wrong. But they didn’t even try to be nice with their threatening email this time…and it wasn’t even MY fault the rep guy couldn’t fill in the blanks correctly. THAT hurt my feelings… ;-(

Son-in-law Mike broke his ankle in three places Sunday night when he took his old dog Mickey out for his mid-night (1:30 A.M.) constitutional. Mickey, a Boston Bull Terrior, is blind, so he must be escorted outside. Mike slipped on the fresh ice and slid down the steps onto the sidewalk. The rescue squad arrived soon after, bundled the patient up, and took off for the hospital, which is about 15 miles from home.

The hospital Emergency Room was swamped with patients, about 70 waiting at one time. Entry into the treatment room is of course expedited when brought into the bay by ambulance, but in this instance the treatment rooms were  occupied, and adjascent hallways were filled with waiting patients. 

All previously scheduled elective surgical procedures had been cancelled, or postponed, because of the influx of patients with COVID-19  symptoms.   So Mike’s surgery was scheduled for today, and as of this writing has been successfully completed and he will be home in a few hours.

Is there such a word as “whelmed?” Well of course there is…a quick peek at the definition of the word led me to look it up with the search word “whelm.”

whelm[(h)welm]VERBwhelmed (past tense) · whelmed (past participle)engulf, submerge, or bury (someone or something).”a swimmer whelmed in a raging storm”synonyms:befall · happen to · come upon · hit · strike · fall on · overwhelm · overpower · overcome · be visited on · engulf · sweep over · take by surprise · surprise · catch unawares · catch unprepared · catch off guard · betideflow or heap up abundantly.”the brook whelmed up from its source”

…so, yeah… checking the etymology has influenced me to add the word “whelm” to my vocabulary.

But I digress… I set out a few minutes ago to unburden myself for having been “over-whelmed” by searching through my storage room to try to sort out the things stored there to decide the appropriate disposition of my “stash.” Books, the ubiquitous multitude that actually is “whelming” to me. Over-whelmed is a bit strong, as (so far) I have managed to emerge more or less unscathed when venturing into one of my book areas…where even my cats are hesitant to enter alone. (Technically they aren’t allowed in there anyway.)

The particular room I am referring to right now was once the master bedroom. It is the storehouse for much of my listed inventory of books for sale, also books that are “my own,” which means they are titles that are in my personal library and not necessarily for sale at this time, and dolls and dollhouse everythings listed on my ebay store.

Several years ago I had space indoors at a giant Flea Market, and maintained both Books and Dollhouse shops. While building my book inventory I acquired books from numerous sources, noteably the life-long collection of a woman who was a retired elementary school principle and teacher. Her husband was also an educator, and between them they had an enormous collection of books. I paid a good price for the collection, and have recouped much of it in sales through various online book venues.

The Flea Market shops, and another antique shop store that I had, didn’t amount to much in the way of sales. So when I decided to get out of the flea market business I moved all the merchandise, books, dollhouse stuff, “much miscellaneous” as the garage sale ads always say, back to my house.

So now I am pretty much whelmed…not really over-whelmed yet, just enough to make my children nervous about someday having to dispose of the “stuff.”

Yesterday I bought a sewing machine. It was just about $60.00 at Aldi’s. All of the parts are present, the light works, the threading sequence is the same one I have known forever on sewing machines. Next I will sit down and sew something. I have great faith that it will work well. I am nervous about it though…there are such nagging issues with sewing machines. Every one I ever had suffered issues with the tension.

I have been sewing since I was about ten years old, and forced to take Home Economics. I will say that I learned to sew, after a fashion. I sewed all of my clothing (well, except coats and really advanced items like that,) and most of my oldest daughter’s clothes until she was about ten years old, and started to make her own clothes. She is not quite five feet tall, and when the big bell-bottom pants came into vogue they were always too long, and the bell effect would have been lost in hemming. So she cut the pattern of the pant leg in a deep V shape, and pieced it together. That worked very well.

Hope the new sewing machine works adequately.

Two years ago when we started making masks because of the Covid19.I used my current most recent sewing machine, which had never really worked well. Having said that, in the interest of being fair, I must admit that I was involved in making wedding dresses for my granddaughter’s wedding, involving volumes of satin in luscious colors: purple and orange, and green. Dau1 sewed THE wedding dress itself, yards of white satin and lace…it turned out lovely.

So, hoping the new sewing machine will not to be a big hassle to thread, always an issue due to my eyesight. The threading process is always challenging in any sewing project, even with a needle-threader. Oh—and the bobbin~ I used to hate bobbins, but we have come to have a working arrangement. Speaking of bobbins, I bought a lovely old Singer cabinet-model sewing machine at an auction, for $7..The spiffy cabinet drawers hold every sew machine gadget every made, that I know about anyway. However…the bobbin case is damaged, or at least it isn’t working at all. It will accept the thread from the top, and go down through the bobbin case and act like it is going to engage and bring the bobbin thread up in tandem with the main needle–but it doesn’t work! It won’t thread, and the thingamajig on the bottom that pulls the thread through is not working. We took it apart, but no avail.

What I want to sew now is some pillows. I have pillow forms waiting to be covered, and some nice colorful fabric remnants from Pat Catan’s while they were going out of business and selling stuff really, really low cost. They had beads at buy one get ten free…at the end. Plus all sorts of sewing notions and beading supplies. At these great give-away prices who can resist? I have millions of beads (well, maybe not millions, but a lot. So when I started beading here a couple of months ago I gathered up all my seed beads and found some needles that worked…and went out and bought some more seed beads. Actually ordered them from Fire Mountain catalog on line.

Another order is pending though, because although I now have four shades of turquoise color beads, and a really nice selection of metallic-like colors, especially copper color. All I have is some weird green shades, and only two Reds. I use the size 11 Delica beads.

I have a variety of little amulet bags that I have finished, except for the straps and/or handles. I haven’t decided yet to add chain straps, or those satiny cords. Unfortunately I only know the Peyote Stitch, and I have been concentrating on that, trying to perfect my technique. There are some nice geometric shapes that I’d like to make, but so far the patterns are beyond my ability. I always like to make the stitching perfect, and that works as long as I don’t try anything fancy, like create a design. The intricate red and white pattern I’ve been working on is tricky because its hard to figure out where the red beads enter the white to form the pattern. My late husband used to say well, you can figure it out, you have a masters’ degree. Yep, but it isn’t in beading!

oh, and then there’s the book project! You don’t even want to hear about that, I’ll be here all night.